My Garden

New gardener

Last post 05-12-2005 8:54 AM by Obelix. 7 replies.

• 27/11/2005 04:42 PM

  Lorac Location: Joined on: 27 Nov 2005 Posts: 6

  Reply | Contact As a working mother with aged parents 3 hours drive away I never had much time for gardening and my husband lost his initial enthusiasm. Now years later with the children off my hands, a retired house husband, and Mum and Dad gone - I have time. I looked out at the thicket and slug farm that was once a garden and thought ah ha. Last Autumn I cleared a bed at the end of the garden (a fairly sunny area), dug in fertilizer, planted up and it didn't look bad this summer. haven't quite cured the slug problem tho''. I've started on the shady border this year and am trying to decide what to put in a rather cold damp area. If any one has any advice for a new gardener (weekends only) let me know. Lorac C Hewitt

• 27/11/2005 05:10 PM	In reply to
  miranda Location: Oxfordshire Joined on: 17 Nov 2004 Posts: 2,976	Reply | Contact Hello Lorac, good to hear that you want to get back into gardening. The more the merrier and all that. For myself, I'd recommend treating yourself to a subscription to a magazine like Gardener's World. Mags like that are full of ideas, step-by-step instructions, question and answer pages, the latest on what's new and where to see things.

• 27/11/2005 05:33 PM

  In reply to

  Lorac Location: Joined on: 27 Nov 2005 Posts: 6

  Reply | Contact Hello Miranda Thanks for the advice. I'll do that. I've just been looking at your idle chat and your website. Gardeners do all sorts of things! I live in North West London, work as a school librarian and have a smallish garden(about 70 ft) west facing, we have a terrace at the back with lots of pots and then the garden is about 18 inches lower. It was the terrace that got me out into the garden, 'cause before we had it built you came straight out the kitchen door into overgrown plants and weeds. As you can imagine there's lots of things to do Lorac C Hewitt

• 27/11/2005 08:36 PM

  In reply to

  Digger Location: Northern UK Joined on: 18 Jul 2005 Posts: 4,743

  Reply | Contact Hi Lorac welcome, slugs and snails? I haven't the heart to kill a snail maybe this is due to watching The Magic Roundabout as a child and brian was a nice chap. If i catch a snail i put him/her in the compost bin where they can do some good, but to deter them from my delphiniums and lupins i create a large circle around each plant with horticultural grit at least 2 inches wide and a good inch deep this has had good results for me. If your garden is enclosed on all side by walls you may struggle to attract land based predators ie frogs / newts /hedgehogs. I have a hedgehog house which is waterproof and each autumn i fill it with clean straw and a few leaves, i do have many hedgehogs in the garden in summer but i don't know if they use the house i have provided i can't tell because if they are in there and i go lifting the lid to see they may wake up and die so i just presume that someone is using it. good luck to you i look forward to you joining in the chat with us all, if you get bored just have a look through some old conversations and you can get a good idea of the "regulars" all very nice people of course digger

• 28/11/2005 10:02 AM

  In reply to

  miranda Location: Oxfordshire Joined on: 17 Nov 2004 Posts: 2,976

  Reply | Contact Hello again, Lorac. The garden space you describe sounds like a good place for you to play in, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. If you make a start now on clearing out the weeds, you'll have a head start in spring. Have a good look at what you've got and try to decide on which shrubs you want to keep and what you might want to get rid of. If you see containerised shrubs that you like, they can be planted at any time as long as the ground isn't frozen or very wet. You could also get hold of some seed catalogues and have a think about those. Sometimes it can be a good idea to sow a seed mix to flower in the first year while you think about what to do next. As digger says, come and join us in the idle chat area. There aren't many of us, but we're very friendly and it would be nice to expand the group.

• 05/12/2005 05:40 AM	In reply to
  filippo lippi Location: Nottingham Joined on: 25 Feb 2005 Posts: 297	Reply | Contact There's an idle chat area now? Where's that? ------------------- Ow! My most of me!

• 05/12/2005 08:30 AM	In reply to
  miranda Location: Oxfordshire Joined on: 17 Nov 2004 Posts: 2,976	Reply | Contact ---------------- On 12/5/2005 5:40:35 AM filippo lippi wrote: There's an idle chat area now? Where's that?---------------- filippo, it's the RHS website section, in a folder called 'bulletin board'. Come and relax.

• 05/12/2005 08:54 AM

  In reply to

  Obelix Location: Belgium Joined on: 24 Nov 2004 Posts: 378

  Reply | Contact Hi Lorac - I have a cold damp bed which faces north but gets full sun from 3pm between the spring and autumn equinoxes. My soil is very fertile and has had plenty of garden compost to improve the structure. Until recently it has grown very healthy assorted dicentras, aquilegias, Japanese anemones, hemerocallis, sweet rocket, foxgloves, lily of the valley, chelone, hellebores, hardy geraniums, primulas plain and fancy, hardy ferns, Russian comfrey, brunneras, pulmonarias.............. In fact I got fed up having to lift and divide every two years as things got overcrowded so now I'm busy turfing all these out to other beds and turning it into an evergreen winter feature bed. I've got a selection of dwarf conifers, a choisya ternata "sundance", viburnum "Eve Price", skimmias, heathers, a vertical form of variegated cotoneaster and a plain green form for ground cover, a golden lonicera shrub and plain green ground cover ditto, varigated ivy ground cover. There are some daffs and snowdrops in for extra colour in the dullest part of the year. It's going to look very good when I get all the seedlings of the former plants out. Every time I turn my back there's a whole new crop! Obelix - Belgium